Religion and Spirituality September 3rd, 2010 - 05:34:50 PM
Religions provide the structures helpful in developing spirituality. Like all structures, religion is a means not an end. Structures are important and their value is in the effectiveness with which they develop healthy souls---but the best of religions are still just structures. Unfortunately, the SBNR movement misses the dynamic and undergirding principle.
Roger Perkins September 3rd, 2010 - 10:37:13 AM
My perspective on death has certainly evolved over the years. St. Francis referred to death, in his final days, as Sister Death. She can become our friend. It is the event that leads to ultimate freedom. The ego's death to the supremacy of the survival drive leads to freedom of the soul. Physical death leads to freedom from the survival drive's very existence and warring with the soul. Not bad.
Roger Perkins September 1st, 2010 - 04:56:48 PM
Morbid grief, the nagging, clingy, semi-debilitating variety, is a profound sadness, often a self-protection device designed to prevent us from facing and living through a deeper, unresolved trauma, usually experienced in childhood or early adolescence.
To move beyond morbid grief, one must get to the bottom of why a loss has such an impact that the person cannot get convert it into a thankful attitude and use the loss as a building block for the future.
It means revisiting earlier losses and deal with the patterns they helped set up of fear, anger and shame.
Roger Perkins August 26th, 2010 - 02:28:16 PM
Losses, sorrow and failures embraced, tenderize the soul—make it chewable for fellow sufferers.
Morbid grief, self-pity and self-loathing make a man’s soul sinews tough and void of anything but perfunctory compassion—if that. Bitterness and self absorption provide no soul nourishment for others and result in a thick crust on the psychic innards of the narcissistic navel gazer.
By our stripes embraced others are healed; our suffering is our greatest redemptive tool.
Roger Perkins August 19th, 2010 - 01:31:52 PM
Grace is love. While law or structures deal primarily with curtailing the overuse of the survival tactics driven by fear, grace, or love, comes from an inner source, the presence essence and power of the Divine.
Structure contains the humanness in order for God (Love) to be expressed freely as the person matures.
Roger Perkins August 19th, 2010 - 10:42:58 AM
There has been considerable controversy over the issues of Law and Grace. It is often as if these two concepts are at odds with one another--incompatible.
If we use different terms/metaphors to convey the concepts we may be able to reduce some of the conflict.
think of Law as structure, enabling a less mature persons to find limits for their behavior. Children need well defined rules--perameters to help them negotiate relationships with others, to learn to care for physical property, to eat properly and to care for their bodies in other ways.
As they mature, these habituated patterns become integrated into the limbic and cortex functions of the brain. There is a cooperative effort developed between survival and risk, self-protection and nurture of others, pleasure and the ability to delay gratification.
DVM August 12th, 2010 - 01:53:11 PM
The work of inner change; deep inner change is tough, weary and at times simply painful. By God's grace and the "working out of my salvation," I'm slowly seeing changes inward that lead to changes outward.
RWP August 11th, 2010 - 11:47:07 AM
I'll add to this blog at least once per week. Feel free to add your comments or questions whenever you wish. My posts, new and responses, will most often be on Monday.
RWP August 11th, 2010 - 11:25:29 AM
The conscious fear is the unconscious wish.
That which we became accostumed to as children, became our "norm." even though it may have been frightening and painful, we carry forward in our psyche that this is as good as we can expect. We will find those who will play the same role in our adult lives. We are destined to repeat our past.
But we are easily fooled because those we hook up with play the role of attentiveness in order to hook the victim. And we fall for it--every time, until we become aware of the truth of our past and, with intentionality, address the core issues.
Bruce February 23rd, 2010 - 10:28:30 PM
Good resource list. How do I contact you to get Higher Ground printed materials or more educational information.
